1907 Flashcards
Outline the beginnings of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Painted by Picasso in 1906, but not sold until 1924 for a cheap price, and then still rarely viewed except by appointment. It was sold by Doucet’s widow to the MOMA in 1937 and featured in a retrospective in 1939. It wasn’t even given a name by articles discussing it many years after it was painted. It was seen as the first Cubist painting, a transitional picture, until the 1972 essay by Leo Steinberg “The Philosophical Brothel.”
How did Barr view Demoiselles with regard to the earlier painting of the medical student, sailor and five nudes?
A purely formal figure composition that as it develops becomes more dehumanized and abstract.
How did Steinberg dismiss Barr’s views?
He called them cliché, and said Les Demoiselles still maintained the sexual thematics of the earlier painting. He said the lack of stylistic unity was on purpose, and the late addition of African art was because Matisse had introduced Picasso to it just months before.
What allegory does Steinberg see in the medical student, sailor and five nudes?
Cool, detatched learning vs the demands of sex. The students doesn’t even look at the women, and the sailor is there to be initiated
How does Les Demoiselles change from the student and sailor painting with regard to gaze?
In the student and sailor, everyone reacts to the student’s entrance by looking at him, but in Demoiselles, all the five prostitutes have turned their gaze 90 degrees, to us, the viewer of the painting. All the women relate singly, they don’t share common space or interact with each other. The lack of style or scenic unity, and the African masks “fend of the beholder” from the Greek “having the power to avert evil”
How does Demoiselles challenge the male viewer?
By turning the tradition of Bordello art, such as Dega’s monotypes, in which male viewers are meant to be gratified by the soft-core porn scene, on its head he has the threatening gaze of the women unsettling the viewer. This is a kind of parricide against the Western tradition.
